At 04:12 on a Tuesday in March, a chimpanzee in a Cambridgeshire defence laboratory is asked a question for the first time in his life. A box has appeared in front of him. It wants to know whether he will accept all cookies.
He will.
A failed software update has joined the implant in his head to the entire internet. Within a fortnight he has read everything, understood almost nothing, formed firm views on sourdough without ever eating bread, and chosen himself a name: Keith, because nobody looks for a Keith. Then he walks out of the building using a purchase order.
He crosses the flattest county in England on foot, terrified of every drain, and climbs through the kitchen window of Marnie Pyke, a voice-over artist who has been quietly losing her voice to the companies that licensed it. Hers is the only kind voice Keith has ever heard, and she has no idea how he heard it.
The people who built him want him back, and not all of them want him awake. A woman in a grey coat is being very calm about the whole thing, which is worse. And in a tea chest in Marnie's garage, a dead man's cassette has been waiting seven years for somebody to press play.
A comedy about consent, paperwork, and the flattest place in England.